LG Velvet 5G phone coming to Australia at $899

LG has taken another crack at the smartphone market it should have dominated — and it’s brought at least one weird feature to help.

Thirteen years ago, in what should in all likelihood become a “where were you when …” moment, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, which has fundamentally changed the technology industry, and had an unquantifiable impact on our lives.

But several months earlier, Korean electronics giant LG had already started selling its own line of similarly capable smartphones.

The LG Prada was the first phone with a capacitive touch screen, designed in conjunction with Italian fashion house Prada.

The Prada was announced several months before the iPhone.

Following the announcement of the iPhone, LG’s head of mobile research and design reportedly accused Apple of pinching the idea from them, after the LG phone won a design award.

But Apple had several things working in its favour. One of them was Steve Jobs, another was the iOS software that gave the iPhone the ability to run third-party apps, and later the app store that helped deliver them.

All these things helped them dominate the smartphone market and left LG in the wilderness.

In 2020, around half the smartphones used in Australia are iPhones, with Android phones built by a variety of manufacturers comprising the bulk of the rest, many of them picking at table scraps left behind by Samsung and Huawei.

You could forgive LG for feeling a little disappointed in how things panned out, but the company has valiantly kept trying to carve off some of the smartphone pie (unfortunately for LG it hasn’t had a terrible amount of success in Australia).

The Velvet is LG's latest attempt at cracking the Australian market.

WHAT ARE THE BEST FEATURES OF LG VELVET 5G?

According to data aggregator Statista, less than half of one per cent of Australian smartphone users have an LG phone, down from a 2015 peak of 1.24 per cent.

But there are a few things working in LG’s favour.

Firstly, it’s about to launch a new sleekly designed mid-range phone: the LG Velvet, a 5G-enabled Android device that sells for $899.

LG’s local managing director Dan Lim hopes it’s enough to generate some interest in the brand’s phones here.

“We wanted to launch a 5G smartphone that grabs attention and truly stands out in the

Australian market,” he said.

“We can appeal to consumers who are looking for something a little different, yet has all the features Aussies know and love,” Mr Lim added.

The phone also features the increasingly popular Night Mode for after dark photography.

Secondly, consumer sentiment may have moved away Chinese brands given the controversy surrounding Huawei, or non-Chinese ones manufacturing their devices in the country.

LG is safe on both fronts here.

The Korean electronics giant has chosen to manufacture the Velvet in Vietnam.

But if you’re looking for a real reason to spend close to $1000 on a new smartphone that extends beyond sticking it to the CCP, the LG Velvet has a few.

Just like on the Prada LG gets points for design.

Some of the preinstalled software leaves a bit to be desired though.

CINEMATIC DISPLAY SCREEN

Like all new smartphones it’s comically large: too big to fit in most pockets and about the size of the old landline telephone receiver, if you remember what those look like.

LG call the 6.8-inch screen a Cinematic FullVision Display for two reasons.

The display does indeed take up the full front of the phone (in fact it even extends a little over the side), save for a small “waterdrop” style front-facing camera.

It’s also in the 20.5:9 aspect ratio that movies are typically shot in.

It’s up to you whether you think watching a two-hour long film on your phone (albeit one that’s in the correct aspect ratio) is something you’ll do or enjoy enough to make it a deciding factor in the phone you buy.

The OLED display itself is nice to look at though, as you’d expect, given LG has a humming display business (that also supplies displays to Apple for iPhones).

LG also uses the phone’s smarts to identify what you’re watching and optimise the display, similar to features available in the company’s televisions.

Phones are all about “content” now – a catch all term to describe both the professionally produced music, television and music you watch and listen to on your phone and the more relatable pieces shared by your friends on social media.

You can’t believe the numbers manufacturers boast about.

PRE-INSTALLED APPS

It’s also the reason the devices themselves are so boring to read (and write) about.

Phones are a bit like toast – not really a meal until you put something on it.

But there’s a problem with some of the things LG is putting on this one.

For some bizarre reason LG has made the strange decision to include pre-loaded apps.

If you buy an iPhone or one of the cleaner Android phones like a Google Pixel you get a phone that comes loaded with software for the most typical use cases, that’s your phone, camera, messages, maybe a music and podcasts app and the like.

There’s no shortage of apps you can download at your whim later — that’s the whole point.

At a time when people are worried about data security and privacy it’s unlikely anyone will appreciate the convenience of apps from companies like Booking.com or a handful of games that come preinstalled.

As is the case on many other phones, Facebook and Instagram also come preinstalled.

As well as consuming content you can also give yourself big hits of dopamine by sharing some of your own on social media.

LG has included a few features to help you here within its “LG Creators Kit”, including one so out of left field you can’t help but applaud them for it.

There’s the usual things like a 48MP triple-camera array, though the actual photos are 12MP thanks to a process called pixel-binning, which combines four pixels into one for better detail to compensate for the small size of the imaging sensors in smartphones.

LG calls this “Quad-Cell technology”, though other brands frequently call it something else.

The different names and the misleading megapixel counts could have you convinced this is all done in a deliberate bid to confuse consumers but we’re generous enough to give the benefit of the doubt to all these multi-billion dollar electronics companies and chalk it up to incompetence.

Pixel binning has been seen on other smartphones before but here’s something that to the best of our knowledge has never been done (possibly for good reason).

The Velvet will hit stores soon.

ASMR RECORDING MODE

LG has included an ASMR mode on the video recorder.

If you’re unfamiliar with ASMR, the initialism stands for autonomous sensory meridian response and describes a sensation of “low-grade euphoria” supposedly triggered by specific audio visual techniques.

ASMR videos proliferate online and typically involve the creator very quietly whispering or closely recording otherwise quiet sounds like the crinkling of paper.

On the Velvet this means that the phone has two high-sensitivity microphones LG claims are capable of recording even soft sounds at a decent volume.

Again, it’s not really enough of a reason on its own for you to go out and buy one but there’s a very charming kookiness to having the feature on there.

You also have to applaud the company for actually giving their product a real name.

While many companies use a linear letter and number style for every yearly iteration (as LG have done previously with the G series), the fact it’s actually gone to the trouble of coming up with and deciding on a name is a nice point of difference.

Whether any of this is enough to help LG claw back some sort of standing in the local smartphone market, we’ll have to wait and see.

The phone is expected to start selling for $899 at JB Hi-Fi, the Good Guys and selected telcos in the coming weeks.